


Skitter

by Zai42



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Arachnophobia, Do Not Archive, Eventual Happy Ending, Gang Rape, Hallucinations, M/M, Mind Rape, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Objectification, Other, Victim Blaming, literal spider gag, threats of eye trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:44:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42
Summary: Gerard finds himself ensnared by the Web, forced to depend on the kindness of his new friends as they struggle to set him free.





	Skitter

The door creaked open, slow and almost comically ominous, and Jon cleared his throat. "Try...try not to touch anything," he said.

  
"Oh, but I wanted a souvenir from the haunted house," Tim said flatly, rolling his eyes. "Should we split up?"

  
"Probably best to go in pairs," Jon said, sweeping his torch over the walls. He found a light switch, flipped it on, and made an irritated noise when nothing happened. "Of course. Right, well, let's _avoid_ the basement, if possible? Tim, why don't you and Gerry try upstairs, and Martin and I will take the ground floor. And be careful."

  
"Sure, mum," Tim said, hefting his axe over his shoulder as he headed towards the stairs.

  
"Yell if you need us," Gerry said. Perhaps he would have bristled at being coddled, once--now he was just happy to have someone who cared enough to bother. It was admittedly a little pathetic, but it had been a very long time without much in the way of companionship. He followed after Tim, running his fingers through the layer of dust on the banister.

  
"Why did we come at night?" Tim asked, kicking open the first door off the hallway. "As if our lives weren't enough of a horror movie cliche." He wrinkled his nose as the beam of his torch lit up the shrouded forms of furniture. "I mean seriously, this is some Paranormal Activity bullshit."

  
There was a faint noise behind them, and Gerry turned around. "Did you hear that?"

  
"Oh God, what?"

  
"I'm...not sure," Gerry admitted, peering into the dark of the hallway. "It might have been--"

  
"The wind?" Tim suggested. "Don't say the wind. That's how you die."

  
"--dangerous," Gerry finished gracefully. "I've been doing this longer than you, you know." He stared out into the hall, straining his eyes against the dim light. He saw no movement, just uniform darkness along the edges of the beam of his torch. "I don't see anything. Keep an eye out. Maybe don't kick any more doors down."

  
"Sure, take all the fun out of it," Tim said, but he nudged open the next door with care, standing off to one side.

  
Nothing came screaming out at them, and Tim inched into the room, axe raised. The room was bigger than the one they had just left, more cluttered with junk, and as Tim disappeared around a freestanding bookcase, the noise came again. A soft scuttling sound, little clicks on hardwood, and Gerry swung around again, catching the briefest glimmer of something halfway up the wall--

  
\--something hit his shoulder hard enough to sent him stumbling backwards, slamming his hip hard against a desk and sending his torch crashing to the floor, where it stuttered and went out--

  
\--he opened his mouth to yell for help and something cold and metallic shoved itself past his lips, forcing his jaw open as wide as it would go. He jerked his head back, his hands coming up to grasp at the intrusion, and skittering legs tightened, one dangerously close to his eye, little pressure points sinking into his cheeks. For a moment he just stood there, taking in stunned, heaving gasps of air.

  
"Ger? You okay?" Tim's voice drifted from the other side of the room. One of the legs against his face twitched, unnervingly organic, and Gerry screamed.

* * *

 

"Let me see."

  
Jon hesitated a moment before delicately tilting Gerry's head towards the light. Gerry couldn't see his face, blinded by the three remaining lights aimed at him, but his tone was colored by concern and distaste and fear, his fingers hesitant as they just barely brushed one of the legs of the gag. It _moved_ in reaction, and Gerry groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

  
"Goddammit..." he heard Jon say, shakily. "All right, all right, um..."

  
Gerry leaned forwards on his knees, his hair obscuring his face from view. The spider in his mouth wriggled, settling in now that nothing was prodding at it. It was a garish thing, made of heavy, brassy metal in the shape of a spider, except that the body was a hollow ring, leaving Gerry's mouth forced open and defenseless to anything that should choose to push its way inside. Its legs were cold and metallic, but moved as if they were alive--a constant, jerking reminder of the gag's presence, leaving Gerry unable to grow accustomed to it.

  
"--take him to Artifact Storage, maybe?" Gerry heard Martin say, and he looked up in a panic, shaking his head. "They might--oh--but--"

  
"No," Jon said, firmly, and Gerry was grateful for it. "No, the Institute thinks he's dead, and we're keeping it that way. We'll...we'll have to figure it out on our own." He glanced back at Gerry and gently tested the give of one of the legs--it flexed under his fingertips, each segment curling with purpose, and they both jerked away from each other. Gerry shuddered with his entire body, his hands coming up in front of his face without quite daring to touch the spider.

  
"We should go," Tim said, glancing around the room again. He'd been on guard since he'd found Gerry, gripping the axe in his hands more tightly. "We're not gonna find anything _now,_ and who knows what else is skulking around?" He met Jon's eyes. "It's not safe."

  
"Right."

* * *

 

Somehow being back in Jon's flat made everything seem worse. Staring at the thing on his face in the brightly-lit bathroom mirror threw everything into sharp relief, and Gerry was torn between tearing his eyes away and staring, transfixed.

  
The spider was more detailed than he'd thought. It had eight carved spots for eyes--Gerry couldn't tell if they were intended to hold some kind of stone or not--and careful detailing along its legs and body gave the impression of hair. Occasionally the pedipalps at the front would move, more smoothly than the legs did, brushing over Gerry's skin, touching him in a way that felt more like _tasting._

  
The legs were still the worst part. The more they warmed against his skin, the more they felt _alive,_ less like metal biting into his skin and more like chitin, flexing and tapping and stroking, in constant, unignorable motion.

  
Eventually he managed to tear himself away from the mirror, wiped roughly at his mouth to keep from drooling all over himself, and slunk towards the kitchen, shoulders hunched.

  
"--good to us," he heard Tim's voice say. There was an edge of irritation to it, but that wasn't out of the ordinary. What _was_ was Martin's voice following, blistering and disdainful:

  
"What use is he now? It's not like he can tell us anything while he's like that. He probably did it on purpose."

  
Gerry froze, eyes widening in shock. He had only known Martin for a few weeks, but he'd never heard his voice take on that tone--never mind what he was actually saying.

  
He was so stunned he almost missed Jon's reply: "Well, use him for stress relief or something, I don't care."

  
Fury pulsed in his veins, overtaking the shock. He hovered for a moment, torn between confronting them or just leaving, fleeing into the night and finding out how to get the gag off himself--

  
"Gerry?"

  
Gerry nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning around to see Martin standing behind him, a notebook in one hand and a toolbox in the other. He looked over his shoulder into the kitchen--it was empty.

  
"Jon found these," Martin said, holding out the notebook and toolbox. "I don't know what he expects he's going to do with the toolbox, honestly, but you can write stuff down if you want to talk to us."

  
Gerry nodded slowly, taking the notebook and pen offered to him. The shock and budding anger were ebbing out of him, replaced with confusion.

  
"We're all in the the other room," Martin said. "Come on, you should sit."

  
Gerry let himself be led into the living room and ushered onto the couch. Jon was hunched over his laptop, scowling, while Tim flipped through a folder. He looked up when Gerry sat next to him and winced. "God, that is a nightmare," he muttered. He shifted, facing Gerry more head on, peering at the spider without moving to touch it. Very gently, taking care not to even brush a fingertip against the metal, he lifted Gerry's hair out of the way to examine the gag more fully. "I don't see anything keeping it locked on," he said. "And the legs aren't attached with screws or anything." There was an unspoken apology in his voice and guilt on his face. Gerry tried to look forgiving.

  
"M-maybe we could leverage it off with a screwdriver?" Martin suggested.

  
As if it had heard, the spider twitched a leg up towards Gerry's eye, tapping beneath it in a slow, steady threat. Gerry made a noise of protest, and Tim backed away, hands held up placatingly. "All right, okay, we won't try that."

  
Jon leaned away from his laptop with an irritated sigh. "Our website is _useless,"_ he grumbled, pressing a hand to his eyes. "There's nothing similar in the digitized files we have--though I suppose there wouldn't be." He glanced over at Gerry, grimacing. "I could go in tomorrow morning and ask if we have anything like it in storage, but I can't imagine that wouldn't...raise some flags."

  
"If--if we pulled everything spidery, maybe?" Martin suggested. "Elias knows we went to Hill Top Road..."

  
They debated back and forth, and after a while, Gerry stopped listening, doodling absently in the corner of his notebook before scrawling _water,_ tapping Martin on the shoulder to show him, and slipping into the kitchen. He sighed, leaning against the sink. The gag's pedipalps stroked against his skin and he shuddered, a low groan in his throat. He wasn't particularly arachnophobic, but--this was a bit much for anyone, he thought.

  
He heard someone come up behind him and let out a sigh. He didn't want help, trying to drink with this thing in his mouth was likely to be humiliating enough without an audience, and he half turned before he was grabbed and spun roughly around, a hand twisting itself painfully in his hair. He yelled, shoving himself away from--Tim.

  
Gerry backed away, breathing heavily, shock and anger surging in his chest once again.

  
"You going somewhere?" Tim asked, and the guilt in his tone had been replaced with dripping derision. "Don't want to get some mileage out of that thing?"

  
Gerry punched him--or he would have, had a hand not grabbed his wrist and yanked him back against a solid chest. An arm snaked up and pressed hard against his windpipe, pinning him easily as he choked and struggled. "If you can't tell us anything, and you're too stupid not to get caught in a trap, you should at least try to be good for _something."_ It was Martin's voice, but crueler than Gerry had ever heard him.

  
Martin kicked hard at the backs of his knees and Gerry collapsed into a kneel, his head yanked up into place by a hand in his hair. Fear pulsed somewhere beneath his outrage, making his breath come quicker, his eyes wider and wilder--

  
"--help finding anything?"

  
And suddenly he wasn't knelt on the kitchen floor, he was staring blankly into the sink, Jon at his side, looking at him with mild concern.

  
"Aah--" He'd left his notebook. Gerry just nodded and Jon gave him a wan smile, retrieved and filled a glass for him, then looked away politely as he attempted to drink without soaking the front of his shirt. He mostly managed it. "Aahn."

  
"You're welcome." Gerry didn't know if that was Archivist powers or just making an informed assumption about what he was trying to say. Either way, he wanted that notebook back.

  
He nodded for Jon to follow him and returned to the living room, scooping up his notebook and scribbling, _It's messing with my head._

  
Jon frowned at the page, the worry on his face deepening. Martin peered over his shoulder. "What do you mean?" he asked, looking alarmed. "Are you hearing voices?"

  
"Feeling urges?" Jon added, passing the notebook back to him.

  
"Could you have phrased that _any_ worse," Tim asked flatly.

  
_Seeing things,_ Gerry wrote. _Not like voices telling me what to do--hallucinations. Don't feel compelled to do anything. No "urges."_ He added a little squiggling flourish to the _s._

  
"It was a legitimate question," Jon muttered, blushing as he scanned the page Gerry handed him. He sighed. "Dammit...all right, we'll...we'll figure something out. I promise."

  
The concern on his face untwisted the knot in Gerry's gut, soothed the anxious buzzing the hallucinations had left under his scalp. Jon's worry was genuine--whatever he had experienced in the kitchen was not. He just had to hold onto that, keep it in the forefront of his mind that he wasn't _alone_ now, that he had allies, whatever lies the thing forced into his mouth might be feeding him aside.

* * *

 

"Messing with your head?"

  
He was on his knees again, one arm twisted up behind his back. His shoulder was screaming in protest; Jon's breath was hot against his neck.

  
"Are you sure that's it?" Jon whispered, lips brushing against Gerry's pulse point. "Maybe you just _want_ it."

  
_Not real,_ Gerry told himself, though it was difficult to believe that while his arm was alight with very real seeming pain. _This isn't real, this isn't happening--_

  
A knee pressed between his thighs, a pressure on the knife's edge between pleasurable and punishing. Gerry groaned, shaking his head wildly. There were hands on the side of his face, stroking along the spider's legs and they stretched luxuriously, hooking more firmly around Gerry's aching jawline. He was pulled forward and resisted, then felt Jon's hand cup his skull and shove him.

  
He didn't know whose cock forced its way into his throat, kept his eyes squeezed shut. It was heavy and solid and felt very real on his tongue, and Gerry couldn't bite down, couldn't stop it from pushing deep, deeper, the head of it sinking into his throat--

  
He woke up coughing, gagging, one hand at his throat, sitting bolt upright from where he'd managed to doze off on the couch, after they had given up for the night. Martin was kneeling at his side; Gerry couldn't meet his eyes, worried about what he might see there--contempt or lust or outright hatred.

  
"You're okay, you're safe," Martin was saying, over and over again. "You're in Jon's flat, nothing's going to hurt you." Gerry made an impatient gesture for the notebook.

  
_Getting worse,_ he wrote, then hesitated, his hand going again towards his throat. It ached, in a dull, throbbing way, an echo of what he had felt in his vision--and more than that, he was half-hard, aching too with the memory of Jon's knee thrust against him. _Can feel it,_ he wrote, and shoved the notebook towards Martin, hoping he wouldn't make out his blush in the semi-dark.

  
Martin leaned backwards, tilting the notebook to catch the light from the streetlamp coming in through the window. "Oh, Gerry," he said, and gnawed at his lip. "Do you--do you want to talk about it? I don't know if--if it will help, but, if it might make you feel better..."

  
Gerry shook his head, mortified at the thought. He began to write again, and halfway through his sentence the gag's forelegs twitched and his hand jumped, leaving a jagged line across the page. _Go back to sle---ep. I'm okay. Nothing you can do anyway._

  
Martin looked unhappy at this, but he nodded. "I'm right nearby if you need me," he said. "Or Tim or Jon, if you need them. We're gonna help you out of that, don't worry." He squeezed Gerry's arm and retreated back to the armchair across the room. Gerry lay awake, listening to his breathing slowly even out, his own heart racing.

  
Mary had taught him a few tricks for escaping from magical traps, naturally, but none of them seemed to be affecting the gag. Not particularly surprising, if it belonged to the Web--those were always trickier, more resistant to letting their prey escape. Gerry wasn't over-worried about that particularly. He wanted the damn thing off, obviously, his jaw ached and he was sick of drooling constantly, but he was patient. Eventually they could figure out how to get it off.

  
The hallucinations were more concerning. If this thing were aligned with the Spiral as well, god or whatever else only knew what it could end up doing. What sort of shape it was trying to mold his mind into. What it might make him _do,_ if he lost it for just a moment, if his grip on what was real and what was deception slipped.

  
He was awake for a very long time.

* * *

 

Sleep came in sporadic bursts, light enough that he didn't dream, and when he heard hushed voices coming from the kitchen, he sat up and listened, trying to determine if they were malevolent or not.

  
"...leaving him here alone," Martin said, and he sounded genuinely concerned, so Gerry picked up his notebook and slipped into the kitchen himself.

  
"Did we wake you?" Tim asked, looking up from a plate of toast as he came in.

  
Gerry shook his head, heading to the sink and filling a glass. He didn't want to drink while they looked, but it was good to have something to occupy his hands.

  
"We were discussing our plan for the day," Jon said. He sounded like he had slept about as well as Gerry, his voice rough around the edges. "Right now the plan is for Martin to check Artifact Storage for anything similar, Tim will comb through the Archives, and I am going to try and track down anyone relating to Hill Top Road and see what they can tell me. It's just..."

  
"Are you sure you want to stay here alone?" Martin asked, painfully earnest. "We could go in shifts, maybe, or you could--could go with Jon and hide your face?"

  
_I'll be fine. It will go faster if you do everything at once, shifts will take too long. Just wish I could be useful._ (He tapped his pen against the page, frowning at his word choice, but showed them without changing it.)

  
"You have a horrible monster sex toy shoved in your face," Tim said flatly. (Jon choked on his tea, sputtering, and Martin slapped his back.) "I think we all understand if you take a sick day."

  
Gerry laughed hollowly. _Just stay out of trouble._

* * *

  
Jon had told him to help himself to whatever he needed, and Gerry's stomach rumbled faintly, but the thought of trying to eat with the spider forcing his mouth open was so unpleasant that Gerry didn't even bother to look for anything. Instead, he took a too-hot shower, carefully massaging his jaw to try and ease some of the tension there. He didn't stand under the spray as long as he'd have liked--the spider didn't like it, twisting angrily against his skin, and eventually it became too unbearable to put up with.

  
He tried to catch up on sleep and found himself restless, so instead he paced around Jon's flat, rifling through his bookshelves. He was flipping through a very dry collection of folklore when a body shoved him up against the wall, fingers dipping into his mouth.

  
"You want to be useful?" Jon crooned in a singsong. His fingertips stroked idly over Gerry's tongue before pressing deeper, ignoring the way he gagged around them to slide against the back of his throat. His other hand was gripping Gerry's hip, bruisingly tight, dragging him back to grind against his ass. "I can think of a few ways."

  
Gerry jerked away, coughing, and suddenly he found himself sprawled on his back in the middle of the living room, staring up at Jon, Tim, and Martin as they closed in around him.

  
Tim sank into his mouth first, tangling both hands in his hair to guide his thrusts. Martin draped himself over his back, popping open the button on his jeans and tugging them down over his hips. Gerry squirmed and was instantly pinned, his wrists held together behind his back. The spider writhed, apparently enjoying itself, more lifelike than it had ever been, warm and textured against him.

  
Fingers forced their way inside him, dry and ungentle, and Gerry sobbed around the cock in his throat, which only earned him a painful yank on his hair. They didn't touch his cock--why would they, it wasn't as if this was for him--but it twitched anyway, and by the time Tim came in hot spurts in his mouth, he was fully hard. He couldn't swallow everything, and Tim jerked his head up, smirking down at him and running a fingertip through the mess of come and drool and tears sliding down his chin.

  
"You--"

  
And then Gerry was back, slumped against a bookshelf, panting like he'd run a mile. He was agonizingly hard, his cheeks were damp with tears, and he was utterly alone.

  
Or so he thought at first.

  
The laughter was so unnatural that at first he thought it was only in his mind, a lingering hallucination, but the spider reacted to it with delight, pedipalps wriggling with anticipation, and Gerry turned slowly to see what stood behind him.

  
Immediately he wished he hadn't. It was like a person, if a person were capable of rendering in low definition. He got the impression of blonde hair, the hint of a toothy grin--all that was clearly apparent were the hands, if they could be called hands. Claws, perhaps, was more accurate. The thing laughed again.

  
"Oh, I _am_ enjoying this," it crooned. "I was so disappointed when I didn't get the Archivist like I had wanted, but you're more fun than I thought you'd be!"

  
Gerry's hands clenched into fists. "Ouaah--" He cut himself off, heat rising to his face. He'd forgotten, in a brief fit of protective anger, that he couldn't actually communicate properly. And his damn notebook was in the kitchen, abandoned there when his friends had left. The thing practically howled with laughter.

  
"Were you trying to ask what I wanted with the Archivist?" it managed, making a motion as if it were wiping tears of mirth from the place where its eyes should be. Gerry nodded stiffly. "Well--this," it said, gesturing broadly in Gerry's direction. "I don't think I can kill him," it continued, sounding vaguely mournful, "but that doesn't mean I couldn't _hurt_ him. Twist his mind, fill him up with visions and nightmares..." It trailed off, and Gerry took half a step away from it. "But you make a good consolation prize, don't you? You always were her _favorite."_

  
Gerry frowned, a sound of confusion on his lips--and then the thing was in front of him, crowding him up against a wall, one sharp hand slicing into the skin on his cheeks while the other tapped at the spider's body. The spider shivered in pleasure, smearing the blood that dripped onto its legs. Gerry went stiff, hands flexing, but something told him trying to take a swing at the thing in front of him was a very bad idea.

  
"Gertrude's," the thing said, in answer to Gerry's unasked question. It pressed one long blade of a finger against Gerry's tongue; he sputtered, blood bubbling and spilling out over his lips. "Precious Gerard Keay, whom she trusted and cared for, as much as someone like her could."

  
He was back on his knees, his face pressed down with his nose buried in Jon's pubic hair. Martin licked sloppily over his hole, fingers pumping into him, crude and obscene. Hands touched him, more hands than there should have been, tugging on his hair to guide him up and down Jon's cock, pinching his nipples harshly, groping at his ass, pressing more fingers into him alongside Martin's. His face was soaked again, now with blood mingling into the mess there.

  
"Look how useful you are!" The thing's voice was delighted and cruel. Gerry's world shifted dizzily again and he found himself sprawled against it, chest to back, with something buried inside him, writhing and pulsing. The thing ran its hands up Gerry's torso, leaving a crisscross pattern of bloodied gashes as it rolled against him. "How long are they going to be gone, I wonder?" it mused. Gerry cried out as the thing inside him widened and throbbed, pushing somehow even deeper inside him, though the thing didn't move its hips from where they were flush against Gerry's ass. "How long do we have for me to do anything I want to you?" It slid its hands beneath Gerry's thighs, lifting him up so he was folded in half, supported entirely by the monster beneath him. "What state will your mind be in, when they finally find you?"

  
Gerry only had a moment to scream, before something thick and inhuman was forcing itself into his mouth.

* * *

 

They didn't let him come. They, or maybe just it, did a thousand unspeakable things to him, relentless and cruel and selfish, things that hurt and things that felt so mindnumbingly good he would have begged for them, if only he could. But they never let him come, keeping him balanced on the brink without once letting him tumble over. For hours, days, years maybe, they kept him--a toy, and not a cherished one.

  
It was only when he felt hands cradling him with tenderness that he remembered it wasn't real, and let out a dry sob.

  
"Hang on, Gerry, hang on, we're here," a voice said, and Gerry almost didn't recognize it as Jon's without the edge of demeaning cruelty to it. "We're getting it off."

  
He heard skittering, and a thin, clicking screech, and the sound of a box slamming shut, a lock being snapped into place. Fingers eased his jaw closed, massaging the stiffness away. He realized he was lying with his head in Jon's lap, and he turned his head to bury it into Jon's arms. _"Help me,"_ he whined, his voice thin and broken with misuse. "Oh god, _please--"_

  
Jon stroked his hair, and when he spoke, he sounded uncertain. "What--what do you need? Tell me how to help."

  
Gerry canted his hips up, too frantic to feel embarrassed. "Need--I--t-touch me? Please, I--"

  
"Breathe," Tim said, running the back of his fingers down Gerry's cheek. "Shh, it's okay. We've got you now."

  
There were the correct number of hands, now, undressing him and pressing soothing touches to each new piece of exposed skin. He panted in Jon's lap, clinging to his arms, and Jon ran tender fingers through his hair, murmuring reassurances with his lips pressed to Gerry's temple. Martin ran hands along his torso in long, comforting strokes, pressing burning kisses to his chest and stomach. Tim's hand curled around his cock, giving it two firm strokes before engulfing it in his mouth, hot and slick and so good that Gerry sobbed again. He writhed, cradled in their arms, and when Jon pressed a chaste kiss to his mouth he finally came, moaning breathlessly against his lips.

  
He had almost hoped he would faint, sink into comforting unconsciousness, but instead he just went boneless and dazed, screwing his eyes shut as awareness came back to him in a humiliating wave. "Fuck," he said, once he was capable of coherency again. He didn't move from where he had hidden his face.

  
"Are you all right?" Martin asked. His hand was still moving in circles over Gerry's stomach.

  
Gerry nodded. He tensed slightly when Jon shifted, but allowed himself to be eased into a sitting position. "How did you...get it?" he asked. He glanced towards the coffee table, where a small box rattled slightly, a heavy padlock keeping it shut.

  
"You would not believe how many of these things there are," Tim said. "Leitner could have started a sex shop with half the shit I read about. I found a spell or something, someone said she'd used it to get her girlfriend out of a corset that kept strangling her. I figured it might work for your little friend."

  
Gerry's mouth curled in distaste. "I'm so glad there's _more_ of these things out in the world," he muttered. "That makes me feel so much better."

  
"There's even a few at the Institute," Martin said. "I mean...I assume so, anyway, Sonja mentioned some things that I wasn't cleared for, and they sounded...uh..." He cleared his throat. "Anyway."

  
"You're really all right?" Jon asked. He hadn't relinquished his grip on Gerry, holding him close to his chest. "I...did you see anything...anyone..."

  
"Are you talking about that...static monster?" Gerry asked. "Yeah. Said it meant to get you."

  
Jon inhaled sharply. "Michael," he breathed. "It told me--I, I thought it was dead, but--it came to gloat. God, Gerry, if I had known it was me it was after--"

  
"You'd what, swap places with me?" Gerry said. "It...doesn't matter, now. And I'm glad it didn't happen to you, anyway."

  
"Still, I...I'm sorry." Jon held him briefly closer, arms tightening around him in a way that felt protective. "We'll put _that"--_ a nod towards the table--"in Artifact Storage, keep it locked up. And you should get some rest. You can take my bed."

  
"The couch is fine," Gerry said, and cut Jon off when he began to protest. "Look I--I'd rather...not be alone. I just...want to be...around you. If I can. Please." He felt like an idiot saying it, like some clingy toddler after a nightmare, but Jon only nodded.

  
"I'll make you some tea," Martin said. "And something to eat? You must be starving."

  
Tim helped him stand up from where they had been curled on the floor. "Not like we've got booming social lives to get to," he said, and gave a rare smirk with barely any bitterness in it.

  
"You can borrow some of my clothes," Jon said. He ran a hand through Gerry's hair, careful to not tug at any tangles. "If there's anything else you need--"

  
"I know," Gerry said. "You're right here."

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in a completely self-indulgent AU in which Gerard is alive and helping Team Archives, solely so he could get gagged and menaced by Michael. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
